Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday April 14, 2011 @04:33PM
from the can-I-get-a-student-discount dept.

Floodge writes "High School students at Explore Knowledge Academy in Las Vegas, Nevada have launched a near space photography balloon which took over 2000 pictures of Las Vegas, Henderson, Boulder City, Lake Mead, Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon, and much more! The 'space craft' was built from used and recycled components for under 60 dollars and was inspired by MIT students Project Icarus in 2009."
Near-space photography via balloon isn't quite new any more, but price is a great frontier to explore. And I'm glad that there's a school called "Explore Knowledge Academy."

The price of what? Was there a market? Buyers? I thought google maps sat view was free??? Is there any straw you Space Nutters won't grasp at to pretend space is some kind of exciting marketing opportunity?

Oh shut the fuck up you useless troll. Why does everything have to be about terrorism with assholes like you? I swear, if an article came up about this years easter-egg hunt, you'd be claiming that the bomb-squad will show up any minute to blow up the eggs.

I've started on a kit to build an astronomy camera, by converting a color web cam to (more sensitive) B&W. Everything else is just software.

There's a video of someone sending up a video camera on a balloon, which shows just how much atmosphere there is to look through, with haze of water vapor, etc., on youtube (can't do the look up here) which was pretty neat. What's missing is some kind of stability (add gyros?)

I'm going to put on my buzz kill hat and say that it's only a matter of time before one of these contraptions is going to get sucked into a jet engine or foul a propellor.

The FAA does have rules on flying unmanned balloons. [gpoaccess.gov] They say things like don't operate them near airports, deploy them only on days with less than 50% cloud coverage, if they're deployed at night they have to have blinking lights, etc. Without more details, we don't really know if these kids followed those rules or not, but they're pretty simple rules to follow, and given the sophistication of their device I'm betting these kids were capable of following them.

The link for the equipment is failing for me. Did see the front page. No way that this can really be done for under $60 though. Sure, if you already have all of the parts and don't factor them into the cost you can do it for under $60, but that is true for many many things, but a pretty pointless statement.

Their website (http://www.projectviking.org/equipment) says:"EquipmentWe innovated upon and continued the trend of low-cost flight platforms, building our craft entirely from off the shelf components for close to 75 dollars."

Bingo, that's the first thing I noticed too. It's hardly doing it at lower cost if somebody gave you an expensive GPS unit and you don't figure it's value in to the cost of the project.. The Project Icarus guys used things they had lying around, but factored their value into the cost of the project. This is a more honest approach.
My assumption is that their SpotGPS unit is MORE expensive (not less) than the cellphone used in project icarus. The only real innovation here is that they used a soft-cooler inst

The components for a full balloon launch (including helium) reached around 60 usd, yet this is taking into consideration the usage of cell phone GPS and not the satellite alternative loaned to the project.

We live in a country where most people can't explain how the tides or fracking magnets work. (Shout out to Bill O'Reilly and other juggalos) We live in a country where the science content of "Mythbusters" is considered too difficult to understand for the average population. We live in a country where a sweet young woman who recently graduated from high school asked my wife if she drove back to the States from her visit home to Japan.

Anything -- ANYTHING -- that fans the dying embers of inquiry in this country should be encouraged. "Hey, how about that?! It's a real pain in the ass to fold even a piece of toilet paper as long as a few football fields more than 12 times. Hey, the higher you go, the colder it gets, and the more you can see. I wonder if..."

Things have gotten so bad in this country, I'm ready to fall back to toddler teaching techniques. "What, you mixed vinegar and baking soda and it got all fizzy? Hooray! Good for you! Do it again! Hey, have you seen what Diet Coke and Mentos do?"

Yo Adrian! Wolverines! We're number 14! We're number 14 out of a field of 27! We almost made the top half! We totally kicked Mexico's butt! Wooooo Hoooooo!

You, t2t10, are what I'm talking about. You're offering a cite that lists us as 14 out of 27 and referencing that as "quite high." You must be proud of that triple digit SAT score. Let me guess, home-schooled, right, or did every kid in your class get a ribbon after running the race?

"The most developed nations?" You mean what we used to call the First World? OK, so in competition with all the countries that aren't walking in shambling horror like Rwanda, we're getting beat by more than half of them. Your sample includes Mexico, a nation that can't protect it's own mayors, police chiefs and judges. And you're proud of this?! With the exception of Germany, by your own numbers we're getting beaten by anyone who's anyone, including members recovering from hist

I just responded to your verbal diarrhea about the supposed failure of the US educational system. Yeah, we should improve, but we're nowhere near as bad as you claim we are. And since we out-spend those other nations, the problem obviously isn't on the spending side.

"And when you were young, per-capita education and health care spending in the US was a fraction of what it is today (in constant dollars), so lack of spending is not what killed those dreams." Simply not true.

I'm Surprised, not for the kids but at the Government. Where was the DHS in all of this and why didn't they shoot it down as a suspected Al Qaeda drone?

I have visions of F16s being scrambled from Nellis to go attack the invading force.

It's great to see that kids still have teachers and sponsors who will help them do something great. Yes, we may consider it small potatoes in some circles but still, this is High School! They're putting fricken sharks with laser beams at stratospheric heights!

Wasn't there a case in WW2 of the Japanese launching a balloon, attaching a bomb on the bottom of it and letting it drift across the pacific? Caused the only civilian deaths in the US itself when someone said "hey, what's that thing in the tree" and poked it with a stick.

"From late 1944 until early 1945, the Japanese launched over 9,300 of these fire balloons, of which 300 were found or observed in the U.S. Despite the high hopes of their designers, the balloons were ineffective as weapons, and caused only six deaths (from one single incident)—a kill rate of 0.067%—and a small amount of damage."

So, yes, it has happened. Once. In all of recorded history.

By this reasoning, my wife's family should have shunned me as a possible bomber pilot there to d

This has drifted completely off topic, but please bear with me. Before writing off the balloon attacks, read up on Japan's Unit 731's activities (warning: it's quite unpleasant reading: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-439776/Doctors-Depravity.html [dailymail.co.uk]). If the war had gone on just a little longer, we could have been faced with a massive biological warfare attack... it wouldn't have taken many of *those* balloons getting through to make life quite unpleasant.

isn't there a team that will work on image stabilization?
I mean near space cheap photography has been done many times.
What's really missing is something to get a stable shooting of the images right now, it makes me wanna puke!!!
Then the animation would really be cool!

This (and other similar) balloons got to around 29000m (translated from the archaic units in TFA) ; definitions of the "border of space" vary, but cluster around the 100000 to 122000m range (where atmospheric drag and lift at orbital velocity become comparable). While this is undeniably a high-altitude balloon, it's hardly "near space".

OK, I'm a pedant. I'll get the phone book so you can call someone who cares.